My Take: What’s In A Name? A Lot.

Regardless of who you are or what you do, you are a brand. And your brand begins and ends with the name. Think of any brand, any one, and try for a second to imagine that brand name associated with anything else. Can you imagine if Nike was a form of aspirin? How about if Bayer made shoes? How about if Google was. . .well. . .it seems they’re everything right now. But you get the point.

Just Do It.

A few weeks ago, I heard that OVAB was thinking of changing the name. The reason was that “OVAB,” both as a name and as a function, restricted the overall abilities and value of the organization to the ecosystem of Out-of-Home Advertising. My reaction, coming from a retailer that they pitched for membership and being a consultant looking at it objectively was, “Really?”

On Wednesday, OVAB officially changed its name to DPAA (Digital Place-based Advertising Association). The news was reported on MediaPost, then later on OVAB.org.

I think OVAB just kicked their brand to the curb. Here’s why:

“Video” Killed the “Television” Star
Any type of moving video outside the home is place-based. No video ends up in places randomly, especially where advertising is concerned. It’s all “place-based” to begin with. “Place-based” is, by admission of the MediaPost article, old school. When talking about the future of communication between an advertiser and a potential customer, nothing should be old school. Joe Mandese, the author of the MediaPost piece writes, “To some extent, the repositioning of the DPAA reflects a broader rethinking that has been influencing Madison Avenue, which is starting to move away from the term “television” in favor of “video” to describe the multiplatform nature of its long-dominant medium of choice.” Then why take the word “video” out of the title?

The name restricts the potential for DPAA’s growth in the entire ecosystem of advertising and video, including online and mobile media and communications. What is strange is that the DPAA seems to be okay with this. According to Suzanne La Forgia, President of the DPAA, “The new name emphasizes the place-based video networks that compromise the bulk of its membership — companies like CNN’s Airport channel, Captivate’s elevator network, and CBS’ Outernet – which are basically focused on extending the reach of TV-like video advertising into public places.” This is a bit insulting to those networks that do not comprise the bulk of the DPAA’s membership but still work to adhere to the guidelines set forth and continue to pay the high dues (which appear to be rising and which will certainly generate questions about the cost-to-value ratio). It also seems to ignore those smaller networks that are trying to conform to the DPAA’s metric guidelines, even if they cannot afford the membership, as if their network impressions are worth very little.

Ms. La Forgia, whom I very highly admire and respect, said, “The mission of DPAA. . .will not emphasize things like static digital billboards, point-of-purchase media, ‘shopper media,’ or mobile media, which may fall under the charter of other trade associations, but will be aimed specifically at the type of advertisers and agency executives who ‘influence television investment and digital investment.’” This is a mistake. In a culture of communication that spans everything from billboards to TVs to iPods to Blackberrys, across a multitude of outlets, with video clearly being the dominant medium, those advertising and agency executives are trying desperately to wrap their brains around the value of an impression in a rapidly evolving world of communication, and would love nothing more than a collective and standard operating procedure that all networks adopt and monetize for them. They would love to look at one sheet, see a matrix of network options paired with impression rates and media buy rates, and say, “Go.” Isn’t shopper media exactly what CBS Outernet does? Doesn’t point-of-purchase media describe just about every checkout video program in the world? What about Walmart’s Smart Network? How is that categorized?

By separating from the other forms of communication, the DPAA appears poised to drive misunderstanding and indecision even deeper into the minds of decision makers. It seems like the DPAA is seceding from the collective effort.

How do you say OVAB in German? Hopefully not “Pinscher.”
There is not enough difference between the names to warrant the change, given the global presence that OVAB has built over the last five years. There are OVAB seminars all over the world now, and I think OVAB, as a name and a brand, was charging full steam into owning the brand of out-of-home video measurement and accountability in all its forms, and developing true measurement metrics that could be adopted across several (if not all) platforms.

OVAB is easy to say as a phonetic representation of the acronym. No one says “O-V-A-B.” We all say “OH-vab.” With “DPAA,” everyone will now call it by those four letters, which is two syllables more than OVAB. This seems silly to write, but think about it. Did you know that GEICO is an acronym? (Government Employee Insurance Company.) How about AFLAC? (American Family Life Assurance Corporation.) My colleague, Dave Haynes, called it “D P Double A” in his article about the subject. But the catchiness of the old title was a degree of brand ownership that “DPAA” just eliminated.

When you plan to give yourself a new name, you have to consider how the name will be used in communications. One of the first rules in naming: Look for a URL. It would make sense to use dpaa.org. But that belongs to the Doberman Pinscher Alliance of America.

Okay, this is, like, the LAST group of people on earth I would want coming after me for any reason.

Looking on ovab.org, it appears they have secured the URL www.dp-aa.org. But when I called that up, here’s what I saw:

Great. Now I have a pack of websites coming after me.

While some out there may not have believed in everything OVAB stood for, or what DPAA is positioning themselves as right now, the name came to mean something prominent that many of us saw as a channel of communication to industries outside our own. We saw OVAB speaking with the media conglomerates of the world, bringing awareness to digital signage, to out-of-home messaging, and the applications that we continue to build.

I’m a big fan of the DPAA and will continue to stand with DPAA in their efforts to raise awareness of our industry. I have written OVAB/DPAA metric measurement guidelines into media guides for clients. I think they are still on the right track with defining the audience and the value of an advertiser’s dollar. But this is not where their efforts are best spent. Instead of continuing to lead the pack, DPAA will now backtrack and redefine their brand and focus. They didn’t have to.

Woof.